Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter can be funny and interesting, and a spot-on scourge of liberals, but has a history of bogus or distorted claims, or half, even quarter-truths. In her book "Mugged", for example Coulter claims that black advances are due to "affirmative action". Such "facts" have become a standard talking point in many quarters, including some "progressive" ones. Before this shaky "truth" she cites well-known conservative economist Thomas Sowell, apparently neglecting to see how (a) Sowell's work undermines her own argument, and (b) the selfsame Sowell dismisses the "due to affirmative action" argument in several of his books- see Affirmative Action Around the World, Ethnic America, Knowledge and Decisions etc etc... Once subjected to even elementary scrutiny, Coulter's claims are easily exposed on 4 counts:

1) Black progress is a long-standing trend, well before any
significant influence by affirmative action quota programs of the 1970s.
In fact, long before any "affirmative action" quotas in the 1970s, or
under Nixon's famous "Philadelphia Plan" of 1969 to counteract union
discrimination against blacks, a majority of said blacks had already
pulled themselves above the poverty line, as shown by scholars like
Thomas Sowell (2004, 1994, 1981.) Black managerial, professional,
technical and higher end skilled employment was ALREADY well on the
upswing PRIOR to AA quotas. In The Economics and Politics of Race,
(1983), Ethnic America (1981), Affirmative Action (2004), and other
books, Sowell shows that in the five years prior to the 1964 Civil
Rights Act black gains in employment and education were actually higher
than in the five years after.

Black progress in
employment and education was a long-standing trend from the WWII era,
almost two decades before the 1964 law, and before the era of
affirmative action in the mid 1970s. Black gains in education and
employment after 1964, Sowell demonstrates, continued this upward
movement in the booming postwar economy. The passage of the race-neutral
Civil Rights Act of 1964 complemented this upward swing and, by
removing unjust legal barriers, provided significant equal opportunity.
Sowell sharply contrasts equal opportunity (fair treatment across the
board regardless of race) with the disguised or open race quotas and
head counts of affirmative action. Thus prior to the 1964 Act, when few
welfare or transfer payment programs as such were in place, blacks were
already moving forward IN SPITE of open hostility from many whites and
open segregation and discrimination in job and housing markets.

Black
education likewise shows the same pattern, with an upward swing of
college admissions due to things like the race-neutral GI Bill, not the
"diversity" programs of white liberals. And most blacks in college do
not rely on "affirmative action"- the many in Historically black
colleges don't, nor do the many in regular degree programs at various
state colleges, nor do a substantial number at the more elite
institutions.

In short, Coulter is simply
regurgitating long debunked right-wing talking points, and is undermined
by the very scholar (Sowell) she uses to buttress her claims. Then
there is the case of white affirmative action- but that's another tale,
also skipped over by Coulter.

2) "Affirmative Action" is a term appearing as far back as the 1930s when it was used in legal cases of courts granting relief to white union members discriminated against because of their union membership. Said white unionists got court ordered remedies, including back-pay for discriminatory treatment, not mere toothless "cease and desist" orders. Again, conservative scholar Sowell debunks Coulter. QUOTE:

"The general principle behind "affirmative action" is that a court order to "cease and desist" from some discriminatory practice may not be sufficient to undo the harm already done, or even to prevent additional harm as the result of a pattern of events set in motion by the prior illegal activity. This general principle goes back much further than the civil-rights legislation of the 1960's, and extends well beyond questions involving ethnic minorities or women. In 1935, the Wagner Act prescribed "affirmative action" as well as "cease and desist" remedies against employers whose anti-union activities had violated the law. Thus, in the landmark Jones and Laughlin Steel case which established the constitutionality of the Act, the National Labor Relations Board ordered the company not only to stop discriminating against those of its employees who were union members, but also to post notices to that effect in conspicuous places and to reinstate unlawfully discharged workers, with back pay. Had the company merely been ordered to "cease and desist" from economic (and physical) retaliation against union members,the future effect of its past intimidation would have continued to inhibit the free-choice elections guaranteed by the National Labor Relations Act.

Racial discrimination is another obvious area where merely to "cease and desist" is not enough. If a firm has engaged in racial discrimination for years, and has an all-white work force as a result, then simply to stop explicit discrimination will mean little as long as the firm continues to hire by word-of-mouth referrals to its current employees' friends and relatives. (Many firms hire in just this way, regardless of their racial policies.) Clearly, the area of racial discrimination is one in which positive or affirmative steps of some kind seem reasonable-which is not to say that the particular policies actually followed make sense."
--Sowell, Thomas (1975) Affirmative Action Reconsidered. The Public Interest 3, pg 48-65

3) Coulter also laments heavy black representation in government employment (another boilerplate talking point) but such representation among WHITES is nothing unusual, and nothing new, and nothing special. But it seems to be a "problem" for Coulter. Conveniently, she forgets to mention heavy WHITE representation as with the white Irish and white Southerners in government jobs as Sowell (1981, 2005) shows. Her convenient miss is similar to the hypocritical Dinesh Dsouza, who only finds it a "parasitic" when black folk are getting a piece of the government action (See his "End of Racism" for example). Ironically, the Bombay-born D'souza himself grew up in a country where many have made a nice living off government jobs. But that's OK you see- they ain't black.

But the blunt fact is that whites have been feeding deeply and heavily from the government bucket and indeed used their control of that bucket to move themselves up economically. Government jobs were crucial in the economic and social progress of white Irish Americans for example, who manipulated that control to discriminate against other Americans. Take away the discriminatory manipulation and domination and the point still holds. Taking any opportunity open- including government jobs- is nothing special among US ethnic groups. It is only when a black man shows up that that it becomes "deplorable." Apparently only those under paler quotas are virtuous, and need apply. Let's look at how the white Irish benefited from and used government jobs:

"In the city's building trades such as plumbers and the masons, Irish-dominated unions adopted nepotistic membership requirements that kept out new arrivals... Similarly the Irish used their political connections to entrench themselves in both skilled and unskilled city government jobs for policemen, firefighters, rapid transit workers and school teachers, even before these workers had their unions recognized."

"nepotistic membership requirements that kept out new arrivals... Similarly the Irish used their political connections to entrench themselves in both skilled and unskilled city government jobs for policemen, firefighters, rapid transit workers and school teachers, even before these workers had their unions recognized."

"The work taken by Irish men differed from that of Irish women in some respects, however. Irish men were heavily tied up with the political machine. They could secure employment in municipal services, with the machine a powerful intermediary. This is not to say that Irish women had no connection with the machines in their search for bread. Some Irish women, usually American-born daughters of Irish immigrants were able to teach school through the help of the machine, and as the city expanded its educational services, these women benefited... But for men, connections to politicians, the ability to trade a vote for a job, helped them secure employment on large-scale construction projects, a labor sector that supported many New York Irish families. When in 1865 the New York State Supreme Court building was being constructed, Irish men made up the vast majority of those drawing a paycheck. Other heavily Irish male occupations also depended on the machine and on the governmental process.

As early as 1855 Irish men were the largest group of the cartmen of New York, including those that specialized in doing city work on sanitation, landfill road projects and the like. To be a private cartman one required a license; to work for the municipal government in particular one needed good connections. Even before the massive influx of the feminine Irish in 1843, the Democrat-dominated Common Council gave a large number of market licenses to Irish men, much to the chagrin of native American entrepreneurs."
--FROM: Bayor and Meagher 1996, The New York Irish, 96-97

"As a consequence, the public sector employed a full one-third of first, second and third-generation Irish Americans in 1930 compared with just 6 percent in 1900. This patronage helped produce a heavy concentration of Irish in jobs on the fire and police departments and in municipally owned subways, streetcars, waterworks and port facilities. Many of the city's Irish middle class worked on the public payroll, especially in the public schools, and thousands of others labored in construction jobs tied to city expenditures. For second-generation Irish-American women, jobs as schoolteachers were the most sought-after career. Such patronage policies would help to bind the Irish working class and much of the middle class Tammany Hall for another generation."
--Bayor and Meagher 1996. The New York Irish, p. 313

------------------------------------------------

4) On the crime front, the same double standards are used by Coulter- oh so virtuous white people compared to evil minorities. But the reality is different. As regards the 2011 black homicide rate of 17.51 per thousand this is
high, but often surpassed by whites- it just depends on the time period
you want to study. The supposedly more self-restrained Dutch of
Amsterdam posted a whopping 47 per 100,000 in the 16th century, higher
than any rate ever recorded for New York City, Irish and all. (Epstein and
Gang 2010. Migration and Culture, Vol 8) In Maryland the rate at which
unrelated European adults killed was 29 per 100,000 adults per year in
the mid 1600s. In white Virginia it was 37 per 100,000. The supposedly
more virtuous Yankee peoples in colonial America in the Chesapeake
posted a rate of 12 per 100,000.

In some decades of the 1800s, white San Francisco posted rates well
above 17.5. Even allegedly milder white Oregon posted a rate around 30
per 100,000. (Randolph Roth- Homicide Rates in the American West) Using
modern FBI formulas, mostly white Los Angeles County in the 19th century
ran up a body count of about 414 homicides per 100,000. (McKanna 2002.
Race and Homicide in 19th Century California). Nor is the West unique.
Studies show the heavily white Scotch-Irish Kentucky-Tennessee
borderlands posting a rate of 24 per 100,000 starting in the 1850s. (
–Randolph Roth, 2009. American Homicide). In a study of homicides in
white Russia, it was found that in 1998, the homicide victimization rate
was 23.9 per 100,000. The 1999 homicide figures were substantially up
over those for 1998.” –Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment, Vol 1. 2002
(David Levinson ed) p. 1426.

5) The white Irish also figured prominently in establishment of
corrupt urban political machines – a development that poisioned America's civil life- from Daley in Chicago, to Frank
Hague in Jersey City, and numerous
places in between.

Let’s look at white Irish boss Frank Hague. Hague has a widely known reputation for
corruption and bossism and has been called “the granddaddy of Jersey
bosses.” By the time he left office in
1947, he enjoyed palatial homes, European vacations, and a private suite at the
Plaza Hotel. His wealth has been estimated to have been over $10 million at the
time of his death, although his City salary never exceeded $8,500 per year and
he had no other legitimate source of income.

During the height of
his power Hague’s political machine, known as “the organization,” was one of
the most powerful in the United States controlling politics on local, county, and state levels. Hague’s personal
influence extended to the national level, influencing federal patronage and
Presidential campaigns. The Irish also greatly increased voter fraud in
running America'
big cities- making the shenanigans of many modern urban mayors seem like Boy Scouts at play.. Under Irish boss Hague for example, Jersey
City had 160,050 registered voters, but only 147,000
people who were at least 21 years old—the legal voting age.

White politicians
like Hague caused massive tax burdens to be laid on hard-working white people,
from Boston to Jersey.
Indeed some of these taxes bankrupted certain businesses. (Jersey
City's Mayor Hague: Last of the Bosses...". Life.
1938-02-07) Other notorious white public feeders – some of the worse leaders in
America-
include Chicago’s “Big Bill” Thompson, and James Curley of Boston.
But not to worry. In their footsteps followed people like Richard Daley and
Governor Rod Blagojevich, now doing 14 years in prison. (See book- Gerald
Leinwand 2004. Mackerels in the Moonlight: Four Corrupt American Mayors.)

The white Irish also pioneered "official" or
"legal" thuggery and abuse of civil liberties in running America'
cities. Irish boss Hague for had a law passed requiring making political
speeches to obtain clearance from the chief of police. A 1930 ordinance gave
the public safety commissioner—Hague himself—the power to turn down permits for
meetings if he felt it necessary to prevent "riots, disturbances or
disorderly assemblage." The latter ordinance was struck down as
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United
States, but continued to be enforced for
several years after that decision. The police were also allowed to stop and
search anyone without probable cause or a warrant after 9 pm.(Sources: Jersey City's
Mayor Hague: Last of the Bosses...". Life. 1938-02-07. p. 45; Hague's
End", TIME, 1949-05-23).

----------------------------------------------------

6) But some may say- are white people the only feeders? What about
Asians? Well Asians are themselves trough feeders par excellence- in
fact they pioneered several aspects of heavy handed and oppressive
government bureaucracy. It was Asians that pioneered one of the world’s
first comprehensive, massive bureaucratic systems- notably the
Confucianist flavored civil service system in China. And today Asians
continue that tradition with the most massive parasitical bureaucracy in
the world- numbering in the tens of millions. It is called the Chinese
Communist Party.

What about other Asians? Let’s take India- a land known for its
massive parasitical bureaucracy. Indians themselves are critical of it..
As one Indian study says: ” India’s massive bureaucracy is maintained
at a huge cost to the country’s taxpayer, whose average income is among
the lowest in the world.” A biased Western view you say? Not at all.
Indians themselves are critical- quote:” [the public perception is that
they are ‘burdensome low performers’ heading a highly bloated
bureaucracy that is often perceived to be corrupt and inefficient.. lack
of professionalism and poor capacity building, inefficient incentive
systems that do not appreciate upright and outstanding civil servants
but reward the corrupt and the incompetent..”
(Sabharwa and Berman 2013, Public Administration in South Asia)

7) As regards welfare- white people are no paragons. Not only are their
recipient numbers greater but despite being more affluent than poorer
minorities, in states where there is heavy black population, welfare
benefits are lower than where whites are a majority. From 1960 to 1990
for example, states with larger black welfare populations offered
significantly LOWER welfare benefits, than in states with larger white
populations. In essence, white welfare recipients saw greater amounts of
aid given than blacks proportionately in said states, even though
whites overall are better off than blacks, whether measured by income,
net worth or family structure.

Far from “undue” black benefit, white people got higher welfare
payments in many locales where they were the majority welfare population,
while the black share was cut where they were the majority. We keep
hearing about massive legions of “undeserving” blacks on welfare, but
the bottom line is that better off whites, proportionately, are feeding
more extensively and profitably from the welfare trough than blacks. TE:
QUOTE:

Hostility to blacks is obviously more serious than hostility to Hispanics, and extends to the under-provision of such public goods as sewers and police in counties with high average incomes in the black population.. the percentage of blacks who are poor is positively associated with the number of welfare recipients and negatively associated with the average payment (indicating lower per recipient payments to blacks than to other groups."

"The percentage of African-American population had a negative effect on the average monthly grant. Therefore those states with higher African-American populations, especially the South, had lower monthly grant amounts.. Grant amounts for African- Americans in the South were significantly lower that those for whites, ranging from 7.3 percent less in Washington. D.C. to 37.6 percent less in South Carolina."
--Deborah Ward. 2009. The White Welfare State, p 77. 121

Another reason for black representation in government is that, relatively speaking, available jobs were more visible in government, which by law, HAS to openly advertise at least SOME available openings, as compared to the vast "hidden jobs" pool (read- white only for white cronies and relatives). Hence as early as the 1950s black employment in federal government was more than their statistical proportion of the general population. This was well before any "affirmative action" quotas. Said blacks learned about job openings, took the requisite civil service tests and earned placement- discriminatory placement sometimes up until the 1970s, but placement nevertheless. In short, when the playing field was made a bit more level- black folk could compete for available jobs actually made known- versus the "hidden" white-network, word of mouth, buddy-system white crony and relative placement.

Another dodge of those who project a perfect world of "merit" is to minimize the fact that workplace discrimination is alive and well. As one news article notes:

"Research buttresses this evidence of wage discrimination with findings
of significant race- and gender-based discrimination in hiring. For
example, Harvard University researchers found that résumés with
“white-sounding” names such as “Emily” are 50 percent more likely to
elicit interviews than equivalent résumés with “black-sounding” names
such as “Lakisha” (Bertrand and Mullainathan 2004). In addition, a
multi-year, national study on race and sex discrimination in large and
midsized private businesses found that intentional discrimination exists
in every region of the country and in each of nine occupational
categories, and it “is so pervasive that affirmative action programs
continue to be necessary” (Blumrosen and Blumrosen 2002). Even as
recently as this year, the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Federal
Contract Compliance Programs found that FedEx engaged in discrimination
against 21,000 applicants in 15 states (U.S. Department of Labor 2012).
In short, although the American ideal may be to judge individuals by the
content of their character, we have not yet guaranteed equal
opportunity in all cases."Source: Economic Policy Institute (2012) The Public Sector jobs crisis. http://www.epi.org/publication/bp339-public-sector-jobs-crisis/

Women by the way (a majority white as far as the workforce) are also heavily represented in government employment, but see, that's OK. It's only when black folk show up to get a share of the pie that the boosters of "merit," hitherto mysteriously silent, launch into paeans about the "problematic." As the EPI think tank notes in its comparison of blacks and women:

"..in 2011 women comprised 48.3 percent of overall employment, yet
accounted for 59.5 percent of employment in state and local government,
significantly higher than their 46.7 percent share of private-sector
employment.. in 2011, African Americans accounted for 10.9 percent of overall
employment, yet held 12.8 percent of state and local public-sector jobs
and 10.3 percent of private-sector jobs.."Source:
Economic Policy Institute (2012) The Public Sector jobs crisis.
http://www.epi.org/publication/bp339-public-sector-jobs-crisis/

Note above that blacks, as a proportion of their overall population, are not "massively overrepresented" in the public sector. Yes public sector employment is prominent, but hardly earth-shattering. Blacks make up a bit over 10% of the population, and hold roughly the same percentage weight in public sector job- 12.8%. In the private sector the proportion is about the same- 10.9%. Compared to white women, (who ALSO are overrepresented) the weights are roughly in the same range. Also compare to the white Irish, who in some decades posted a full ONE-THIRD of the working population in government employment ( Bayor and Meagher 1996
). The selective, high dudgeon in some quarters about "the coloreds" suggests that the REAL problem there is that black folk are getting a piece of the action- which is no longer "reserved" for certain paler types.

Hypocritical "heriditarian" types like to lecture
about "merit," but the record shows that in numerous instances, alleged white
"role models" secured their positions not by "merit" and
skill, but by political activity, uncompetitive crony/nepotistic networks, corruption and manipulation, feeding heavily
from the taxpayer purse. Decades of such manipulation and corruption enabled
them to lock out other Americans while they moved up the occupational ladder.

Note: This post is not a brief for affirmative action or government employment, but rather to point out the hypocrisy of the narrative from certain quarters that bashes blacks, while conveniently portraying whites as virtuous paragons of "merit" and "free markets." The record however shows a much less flattering reality.

Monday, June 10, 2013

In some quarters, the standard narrative alleges a veritable "flood" of blacks and other minorities supposedly "taking white jobs" under "affirmative action." But this "fact," so often repeated as "truth" by assorted right-wing types is bogus. It is not only that the "flood's" numbers are shaky but the record shows weak enforcement of laws or regulations already on the books, contradicting claims of reputed massive oppression on employers. Indeed scholars studying enforcement note that in some cases it would take "the bureaucrats" 38 years to make ONE cycle of investigation of the employer pool.

The commentary below does not at all rule out the possibility that somewhere, somehow, out of thousands of cases over 3 decades, EEOC involvement might have been unnecessary or negative, with possible disincentives to hire persons in a protected class, for fear of future complaints, or implementation of defensive, negative "CYA" personnel or supervisory practices when dealing with employees of a protected class. Such is possible. This post however focuses on the standard propaganda narrative of massive numbers of minorities"swamping" the workplace and displacing whites due to "quotas." In reality, the reputed "flood" of popular lore exists primarily in the imagination, and bogus broadsides of assorted propagandists.

QUOTE:"virtually all affirmative action [in employment] is voluntary since the government resources to enforce requirements or monitor further compliance have always been limited and are shrinking further. She estimates that currently there are only enough resources for each employer to be investigated only every thirty-eighty years."
(Hartmann 1996 Who has benefited from Affirmative Action in Emloyment" in Curry ed 1996, The Affirmative Action Debate.)

"By 1968, its [the EEOC's] complaint backlog exceeded 30,000. A decade later that number had grown to 150,000. In recent years, the EEOC received about 63,000 complaints annually, and has been able to bring suit in no more than 500 a year. Moreover, when suit is brought, cases, as a rule, take the better part of a decade or more to reach a legal resolution."

"Nevertheless, visitors to government contractors in 1995-94 who inquired about their compliance with affirmative action requirements found that 75 percent were in substantial noncompliance. In fact, since 1972 only 41 contractors have been debarred from the list of approved federal contractors out of the thousands whose performance was judged satisfactory. In addition, only four of those who have been debarred were larger corporations, and in these four cases, the debarment lasted less than three months. One study found that most agencies responsible for non-contruction contractors reviewed less than 20 percent of all federal contracts. One local office had two people monitoring 29,000 contracts."--Cohen and Sterba (2003) Affirmative action and racial preference: a debate, pp190-207

EEOC enforcement long hampered by a massive backlog of cases and deliberate, systematic budget cuts designed to hamstring enforcement.

"Between 1981 and 1983, the budgets of the EEOC and the OFCCP (the Office of Federal Contract Compance Program) were respectively cut by 10 and 24 percent, their staffs by 12 and 34 percent, and travel funds for EEOC investigations were eliminated. During the Reagan era, affirmative action under the federal government's contract compliance program virtually ceased to exist."

"the EEOC’s backlog increased 35% from 54,970 in 2007 to 73,951 in 2008; the number of complaints increased nearly 20% from 79,896 in 2007 to 95,402 in 2008; nearly two-thirds of all complaints filed alleged gender or racial discrimination."
--National Law Journal, 12/14/2009, "EEOC will get $23 million to reduce 70,000-case backlog"

Quotas are nothing new- there being race quotas in favor of white males from the beginning of US history. In more specific 20th century workplace terms, quotas originated in the 1930s to help white union members discriminated against due to union membership,. Courts recognized that merely saying "please stop" would do nothing to redress the damage inflicted. In like manner Cuurts have ordered "make whole" remedies using quotas to redress damage done to working people directly impacted by discrimination, as even conservatives note. QUOTE:

"Backward, redneck segregationists, hanging onto the last vestiges of institutionalized racism in Alabama, attracted the wrath of the Supreme Court in 1987. In United States v. Paradise, the Alabama State Department of Public Safety had thumbed its nose at a 1970 federal court ruling ordering an end to its systematic discrimination against black state troopers. At the time of that ruling, there was not a single black on the force. Twelve years after the federal court ruling, no black state trooper had been advanced beyond entry level. In response, the federal court ordered racial quotas to end the "pervasive, systematic and obstinate discriminatory exclusion of blacks."
--Phil Valentine. 2016. The Conservatives Handbook: Defining the Right Position on Issues from A to Z

"Hereditarian" or right-wing notions about how AA quotas "hurt" white "the white working man" are distorted and in many cases very dubious. For example firms covered by AA in employment showed unimpressive growth in black employment. And in NON covered firms, with no quotas, black gains STILL happened anyway, without needing any "quotas." And the blue collar "white working man" was in trouble decades before "Affirmative action" was anything significant- due to the shift to services from manufacturing and shift to cheaper manufacturing locales overseas.

In some cases, some non-elite white
males have suffered from AA quotas but credible documentation shows minor impact. Indeed, the overall impact of AA quotas has been small. AA was
pitched as a way also to help the poor blacks. But in fact it has done
little for them and rather helped those already better off, or better
positioned. But all credible data shows that AA quotas has had little to
do with the decline of non-elite white males. They were ALREADY on the
downslope with the decline of manufacturing and union jobs- ongoing
since the 1970s. Non-elite white males have also lost out because the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 opened up numerous “protected” or “reserved”
jobs to open competition. White employers found they could get equal or
better black labor, cheaper than the white union people they had to
earlier employ. This opening up of previously “off-limits” jobs is not
AA quotas, but standard equal opportunity door opening endorsed by both
liberals and conservatives.

In SOME cases yes, AA did hurt non-elites, but the overall impact is
small, compared to the much larger economic trends that have hurt
non-elite white males. One study of govt contractors with AA between
1974 and 1980, for instance, Leonard (1984;1990) [Leonard, Jonathan,
"Impact of Affirmative Action on Employment, Journal of Labor Economics,
etc] finds that among contractors black male employment rose from 5.8%
to 6.7, an unimpressive .9 percent, LESS than even 1%- rather trivial.
In the same study whites fell from 58.3% to 53.3%, an equally
unimpressive 5%. But in firms not covered by AA, white employment STILL
dropped anyway from 44.8% to 41.3% and black employment still rose
anyway from 5.3 to 5.9%. In short, the black gains under AA were a
minimal 1%, and were unimpressive compared to blacks without AA who
moved ahead anyway. Without AA there were still black gains.

The overall picture is of AA having a minimal or small impact.
Without AA involved, the white guys were STILL on the downslope. AA made
little difference to the white overall trend. Indeed credible studies
of “reverse discrimination” show that it has had little effect on
whites. (Blumrosen 1996). This is contrary to the standard HBD
propaganda line of vast numbers of white jobs being lost to “quotas for
blacks”. Such claims are fantasy.

Even with so-called "non-racial" social policies, white greed and manipulation ensured that blacks would be frozen out or hamstrung from sharing the benefits. The GI Bill's massive discrimination in implementation, and federal housing policies that enshrined redlining and subsidized loan discrimination against black families and veterans are cases in point. As Atlantic Columnist Taheshi Coates points out:

"The oft-celebrated G.I. Bill similarly failed black Americans, by mirroring the broader country’s insistence on a racist housing policy. Though ostensibly color-blind, Title III of the bill, which aimed to give veterans access to low-interest home loans, left black veterans to tangle with white officials at their local Veterans Administration as well as with the same banks that had, for years, refused to grant mortgages to blacks. The historian Kathleen J. Frydl observes in her 2009 book, The GI Bill, that so many blacks were disqualified from receiving Title III benefits “that it is more accurate simply to say that blacks could not use this particular title.”

In Cold War America, homeownership was seen as a means of instilling patriotism, and as a civilizing and anti-radical force. “No man who owns his own house and lot can be a Communist,” claimed William Levitt, who pioneered the modern suburb with the development of the various Levittowns, his famous planned communities. “He has too much to do.” But the Levittowns were, with Levitt’s willing acquiescence, segregated throughout their early years. Daisy and Bill Myers, the first black family to move into Levittown, Pennsylvania, were greeted with protests and a burning cross. A neighbor who opposed the family said that Bill Myers was “probably a nice guy, but every time I look at him I see $2,000 drop off the value of my house.”

The neighbor had good reason to be afraid. Bill and Daisy Myers were from the other side of John C. Calhoun’s dual society. If they moved next door, housing policy almost guaranteed that their neighbors’ property values would decline... Whereas shortly before the New Deal, a typical mortgage required a large down payment and full repayment within about 10 years, the creation of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation in 1933 and then the Federal Housing Administration the following year allowed banks to offer loans requiring no more than 10 percent down, amortized over 20 to 30 years. “Without federal intervention in the housing market, massive suburbanization would have been impossible,” writes Thomas J. Sugrue, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania. “In 1930, only 30 percent of Americans owned their own homes; by 1960, more than 60 percent were home owners. Home ownership became an emblem of American citizenship.”

That emblem was not to be awarded to blacks. The American real-estate industry believed segregation to be a moral principle. As late as 1950, the National Association of Real Estate Boards’ code of ethics warned that “a Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood … any race or nationality, or any individuals whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values.” A 1943 brochure specified that such potential undesirables might include madams, bootleggers, gangsters—and “a colored man of means who was giving his children a college education and thought they were entitled to live among whites.”

The federal government concurred. It was the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, not a private trade association, that pioneered the practice of redlining, selectively granting loans and insisting that any property it insured be covered by a restrictive covenant—a clause in the deed forbidding the sale of the property to anyone other than whites. Millions of dollars flowed from tax coffers into segregated white neighborhoods. “For perhaps the first time, the federal government embraced the discriminatory attitudes of the marketplace,” the historian Kenneth T. Jackson wrote in his 1985 book, Crabgrass Frontier, a history of suburbanization. “Previously, prejudices were personalized and individualized; FHA exhorted segregation and enshrined it as public policy. Whole areas of cities were declared ineligible for loan guarantees.” Redlining was not officially outlawed until 1968, by the Fair Housing Act. By then the damage was done—and reports of redlining by banks have continued.""[In Chicago] Like the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, the Federal Housing Administration initially insisted on restrictive covenants, which helped bar blacks and other ethnic undesirables from receiving federally backed home loans. By the 1940s, Chicago led the nation in the use of these restrictive covenants, and about half of all residential neighborhoods in the city were effectively off-limits to blacks.

It is common today to become misty-eyed about the old black ghetto, where doctors and lawyers lived next door to meatpackers and steelworkers, who themselves lived next door to prostitutes and the unemployed. This segregationist nostalgia ignores the actual conditions endured by the people living there—vermin and arson, for instance—and ignores the fact that the old ghetto was premised on denying black people privileges enjoyed by white Americans.

In 1948, when the Supreme Court ruled that restrictive covenants, while permissible, were not enforceable by judicial action, Chicago had other weapons at the ready. The Illinois state legislature had already given Chicago’s city council the right to approve—and thus to veto—any public housing in the city’s wards. This came in handy in 1949, when a new federal housing act sent millions of tax dollars into Chicago and other cities around the country. Beginning in 1950, site selection for public housing proceeded entirely on the grounds of segregation. By the 1960s, the city had created with its vast housing projects what the historian Arnold R. Hirsch calls a “second ghetto,” one larger than the old Black Belt but just as impermeable. More than 98 percent of all the family public-housing units built in Chicago between 1950 and the mid?1960s were built in all-black neighborhoods.

Governmental embrace of segregation was driven by the virulent racism of Chicago’s white citizens. White neighborhoods vulnerable to black encroachment formed block associations for the sole purpose of enforcing segregation. They lobbied fellow whites not to sell. They lobbied those blacks who did manage to buy to sell back. In 1949, a group of Englewood Catholics formed block associations intended to “keep up the neighborhood.” Translation: keep black people out. And when civic engagement was not enough, when government failed, when private banks could no longer hold the line, Chicago turned to an old tool in the American repertoire—racial violence. “The pattern of terrorism is easily discernible,” concluded a Chicago civic group in the 1940s. “It is at the seams of the black ghetto in all directions.” On July 1 and 2 of 1946, a mob of thousands assembled in Chicago’s Park Manor neighborhood, hoping to eject a black doctor who’d recently moved in. The mob pelted the house with rocks and set the garage on fire. The doctor moved away.

In 1947, after a few black veterans moved into the Fernwood section of Chicago, three nights of rioting broke out; gangs of whites yanked blacks off streetcars and beat them. Two years later, when a union meeting attended by blacks in Englewood triggered rumors that a home was being “sold to niggers,” blacks (and whites thought to be sympathetic to them) were beaten in the streets. In 1951, thousands of whites in Cicero, 20 minutes or so west of downtown Chicago, attacked an apartment building that housed a single black family, throwing bricks and firebombs through the windows and setting the apartment on fire. A Cook County grand jury declined to charge the rioters—and instead indicted the family’s NAACP attorney, the apartment’s white owner, and the owner’s attorney and rental agent, charging them with conspiring to lower property values. Two years after that, whites picketed and planted explosives in South Deering, about 30 minutes from downtown Chicago, to force blacks out.

When terrorism ultimately failed, white homeowners simply fled the neighborhood. The traditional terminology, white flight, implies a kind of natural expression of preference. In fact, white flight was a triumph of social engineering, orchestrated by the shared racist presumptions of America’s public and private sectors. For should any nonracist white families decide that integration might not be so bad as a matter of principle or practicality, they still had to contend with the hard facts of American housing policy: When the mid-20th-century white homeowner claimed that the presence of a Bill and Daisy Myers decreased his property value, he was not merely engaging in racist dogma—he was accurately observing the impact of federal policy on market prices. Redlining destroyed the possibility of investment wherever black people lived."The devastating effects are cogently outlined by Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro in their 1995 book, Black Wealth/White Wealth:

Locked out of the greatest mass-based opportunity for wealth accumulation in American history, African Americans who desired and were able to afford home ownership found themselves consigned to central-city communities where their investments were affected by the “self-fulfilling prophecies” of the FHA appraisers: cut off from sources of new investment[,] their homes and communities deteriorated and lost value in comparison to those homes and communities that FHA appraisers deemed desirable."--Ta-Nehisi Coates. 2014. The Case for Reparations. June 2014. The Atlantic